Siberian Education: Growing Up in a Criminal Underworld
By (Author) Nicolai Lilin
Translated by Jonathan Hunt
Text Publishing
The Text Publishing Company
31st May 2010
Australia
General
Non Fiction
Memoirs
364.1092
Paperback
464
Width 154mm, Height 234mm, Spine 33mm
605g
The only thing a worthy criminal takes from the cops is a beating, and even that he gives back, when the right moment comes. Siberian Education is the story of a tiny, tightly knit community of 'honest' and 'dishonest' criminals in Transnistria, a remote region between Moldovia and the Ukraine. This is a place with a strict code of honour, a complex hierarchy, and a deep distrust of outsiders - and especially police. Transgressions bring swift and severe retribution, and weapons are treated almost as religious icons. Nicolai Lilin's memoir is an account of a young boy growing up in a world that is strangely recognisable, yet unlike anything we have experienced. Controversial, brutally honest and sometimes disturbing, Siberian Education takes the reader to a place no writer had ever been.
Nicolai Lilin grew up in the small republic of Transnistria, which declared its independence in 1990 but has never been recognised. He fought in the Russian army against the Chechens, became a fisherman off the coast of Ireland for a year and now runs a tattoo parlour in Turin.